On The Stranger

When I started Albert Camus' The Stranger, I was pleasantly curious about how it would develop.  A quarter into the book, I still wasn’t able to sympathize with Meursault, the protagonist, but I was willing to be patient.  I wanted to find something admirable.  Initially I was enchanted by his attention to detail.  I soon realized the sour note to his paradigm. 

It was pleasant to learn of Meursault’s focus on landscape and atmosphere.  He enjoys common daily occurrences.  He is courteously good-mannered.  But he is a brittle and accidental person, dispassionately moved from here to there by external events.  Mostly a conglomeration of unimpressive appetites, and passive desires for comfort, he has no real attachment or intention towards his friends, family, or lover.    

There was a shimmering moment when I thought Meursault showed something good inside, but that was false.  On the beach, Meursault is in the midst of a heated situation—someone has brought at knife to a gun fight, and Meursault talks down the gunman and confiscates the weapon tactfully.  Reading this, I was relieved and satisfied.  I thought that at last, I’d seen intention and attachment, some virtue and wit in him.  However, after this moment, Meursault promptly returns to empty-headedness.  So empty-headed is he, that he goes back to the same place on the beach, approaches the knife wielder, and shoots him dead.  As if he didn’t know what was going to happen.  How is that possible?  How can a grown man, of any mental capacity, not know that walking up to a man whose life has been threatened and has already proven manically vengeful, is a bad idea?  It is clear and apparent to any thinking person that that’s a bad idea.  Oh, Meursault,I cannot sympathize with this.

It’s not until the end of his story, when he’s condemned to execution, that passionate opinions come out of him at last.  It stands at odd contrast with the rest of his narrative, actually. Meursault frowns on his sentence, not because he wants another chance or thinks he’s wrongfully condemned, but because he doesn’t like it.  He feels that his sentence is a “blood-thirsty rite” of society.  He imagines that his execution ought to have a small possibility of being ineffective, in the event of which he should go free.  What of justice, then?  Can it be right for a criminal to be sentenced to a grey punishment?  What purpose would it serve to build-in an escape for the convicted?  That would be dashing away from consequences without a care in the world.  There would be nothing to fill the void the crime created, without any sort of penitence or payment.  I cannot sympathize with this, either.

I’m tempted to write Meursault off as an imbecile or a psychopath, but when he’s confronted by a priest, additional opinions are revealed which give me pause.  The priest comes to visit even though Meursault has refused religious services.  It is a bland exchange and Meursault is bored until the priest says he will pray.  This throws Meursault into a rage somewhat inexplicably (74).  What sparked that?  It must have something to do with his next musings, where he says all people are privileged and all people are “condemned” to die.  Unequivocally, every person is guilty of being mortal—what does anything matter, one way or the other?  With this view, it must be frustrating to have others foist eternity and immortality upon oneself.  Knowing this, I can better understand his whimbling between various courses of action.  It gives me insight as to what he means that every choice comes to the same end.  I can almost sympathize with this.   

Lastly, Meursault says that it is common knowledge that life isn’t worth living (70).  But why then does he want to go free?  Why then does he fly into a rage at the priest, feeling the need to assert the justification for his decisions, his life? I’m still wondering.  I look forward to the discussion in class, maybe someone else can shed some light.